


44

by Jo Lasalle (Jo_Lasalle)



Series: Five Ways Lee Adama Never Met Laura Roslin [5]
Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Apocalypse with a hopeful ending, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-05-23
Updated: 2006-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:46:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27860998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jo_Lasalle/pseuds/Jo%20Lasalle
Summary: They eat; they sleep; on the good days, nobody dies.Lee and his crew have been trying to hold it together after the destruction of the colonies, but they don't exactly have a long-term plan.(Part of a number of stories re-uploaded for archival purposes. It's been over 15 years, and so any tagging or summaries are going to be extremely bare-bones! I tried to time a bulk upload so nobody got 10 separate notifications, but if I did accidentally spam people, my apologies!)
Series: Five Ways Lee Adama Never Met Laura Roslin [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2039657





	44

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of a "Five Ways" series - five AU first meetings between Laura Roslin and Lee Adama. 
> 
> Re-uploaded for archival purposes. It's been over 15 years, and so any tagging or summaries are going to be extremely bare-bones.

They eat; they sleep; on the good days, nobody dies.

It's a short ride, but the atmosphere in the Raptor is humid and too hot, Lee's skin damp and itching under his heavy gear. He's been up for forty-eight hours. So far this has been a good day.

"Closing in," Liam the pilot says quietly; everybody else is silent, holding their breaths as the vessel fills the screen, a bulky transport that has taken a beating or ten, just like the rest of them.

Lee adjusts the holster of his sidearm, wriggles his gloved fingers for mobility. In another time, in another life, he wouldn't have been near a gun in his condition. He wouldn't have been in charge of a vital mission and six equally worn-down, edgy marines, either.

The ship's hangar doors wear the flaky remains of paint in different colours, like it changed hands more than once. They remain closed.

"They're not letting us dock," Liam reports, and nobody says anything but Lee feels them hunker down, shut themselves off against the images from the last time, and the time before that, and the one before.

"Tell them to open their hangar doors if they don't want a hole in their hull," he says. He even manages to sound sure of himself.

"Oh gods." A soft whimper next to him on the bench; Specialist Graeme in her marine uniform has her eyes on the opposite wall, wide and fearful, and the shake of her head is slow, her voice a thin scratch in the heavy air. "I don't want to do this anymore."

A shift goes through the others, the collective wish for her to shut up, hold it in. Lee reaches over, pats her awkwardly on the thick padding of her vest, and his shoulder twinges with the healing stab wound.

A pocket knife. It had folded shut during the brief struggle, cutting across the boy's fingers.

"It'll be fine," he tells her quietly, and then looks at the rest of them even though their eyes are firmly on the floor, and raises his voice. "It will be fine."

He doesn't want to do this anymore, either. Doesn't want to send them there. Doesn't want to fight his way onto unwilling ships, stare people down while they tremble before his gun, angry and terrified.

He finds a spot on the wall to stare at while they wait for the response and tunes out Graeme's uneven breathing. It will be okay. Their request is reasonable, their demands fair.

He checks his gun. His clip is half-full. This should not go wrong; they're short on ammunition, he thinks; and then, only then: no more deaths. There should be no more deaths.

His headset broke in a fight weeks ago, but the stiff collar of the vest presses into his neck as he leans his head back, his throat tight with guilt. He's not cold. He's not so hardened he doesn't care. He's just tired, and his people are scared and they've run out of hope. Ammunition is just one more thing.

On the other side of him, Tobias clears her throat. "They'll be okay, sir; right?" She's calm, though, in control. "Jo and Buzzer. And the others."

Lee flashes on Buzzer's mangled leg; people bleeding out; dehydration; feverish ramblings. "They'll be fine," he says, breathing out slowly. "We do this right, everything will work out."

His eyes snap open with Liam's sigh of relief, and the slow give of the hangar doors sends his heart racing. If they do this right.

The landing is smooth, easy. Lee watches his people check their weapons, the fit of their vests, and then they get up and get ready, and he doesn't have time to think about the unfocused look on Graeme's face.

They check for atmosphere before they open the hatch. They always check.

No one is there as they disembark, guns drawn, a practiced formation that almost makes them look like a unit. There's a gallery at three meters' height, but they've got it covered and there's nobody here at all. Lee isn't sure what to make of that, but the hangar doors don't open to vent them into space and the hatch to the ship's insides grumbles sideways at the simple push of a button. Could be worse.

Tobias takes point at his order, leading them up the narrow corridor; Graeme is next, then Lee. He wishes for a com panel, wants to announce himself by something other than their weapons.

Even quiet, approaching the bend in the corridor at a careful pace, they still make some noise; not all of them have training, and Lee strains hard for sounds of an ambush, so focused that his own regular breathing seems loud.

But there's no missing the dull clank of something metal hitting the floor behind them; instant rush as he spins around at the same time as Tobias freezes and shouts to stop, and Lee's people draw together against guns pointing at them from both directions.

"Hold your fire," he yells, bumping into Graeme as he covers the back corridor. A maintenance tube or an overhead compartment. So frakking obvious, and so frakking close now, three men, all armed, cutting them off from the hangar and their Raptor. Four people at least in the party ahead, and it's their ship, they'll have reinforcements.

They haven't picked the best spot for it if they want to kill them; no cover either way. But the setup is _really_ bad if it's meant to force them back onto their ship.

"My name is Captain Lee Adama," he says loudly, breathing hard with the adrenaline, weeks of this, missions gone bad and missions survived racing through his mind. "We're here to collect the medical supplies that are Colonial Fleet property." Slowly, fighting the tension in his muscles to make it smooth and unthreatening, he lowers his gun. His people keep theirs at the ready; they've done this before. "We're not here to hurt anybody."

Nothing; Lee takes one step forward, lets them see he's the negotiator, that there's room for negotiation. Still no one moves, until one of the men Lee is facing steps away from his companions; his rifle stays up, and Lee draws in a deep breath.

"I don't care who you are," the man says, but his careful advance might mean that there's the possibility of talking. Lee takes another step; there's only a gun barrel's distance between them now. The man's voice is tight, flat with suppressed fear. "You just get off this ship. Go steal from somebody else."

They're not stealing. They're not stealing and his soldiers are dying, and here's someone else who is afraid of them. Someone else Lee doesn't want to fight, but he will if he has to. "These supplies don't belong to you," he says, his voice level. "We're not here to steal anything. Some of your cargo is Colonial Fleet--"

It's nothing, a twitch by one of the civilian, and somebody gasps and there's a shout and things _move_ and that might be it, they're all dead, and Lee whips his head around with his free hand in the air, shouting, "No!"

They freeze; Lee sees Graeme's mouth trembling, and her gun, too. Too frakking close.

When he turns back around, their leader's rifle is right before his eyes, almost touching him. A dangerous mixture of anger and fear stares back at him, but the worst is the cluelessness, the small gleam of triumph Lee can sense in the man; he thinks Lee just showed weakness, that's what he cares about instead of the ten or more guns in a narrow corridor and potential disaster at a wrong word, and all Lee can do is keep his calm and hope for no one to move, for none of his tired, ill-trained people to make another mistake. A trickle of sweat runs down between his shoulder blades.

"Take," he says, breathing out slowly through his nose, "your gun," and his shoulders come down with an effort, one hand rigid around his own weapon, "out of my face."

The rifle is not steady, but it doesn't drop, the man licking sweat off his upper lip.

"Take your gun out of the captain's face, please."

At first Lee is startled; so is the guy still trying to out-stare him. A clear command that hits home in the man's eyes, spoken with authority but no aggression.

A moment of silence, deliberation, but they've been heading for disaster, so Lee takes a breath and a chance, and ignores the continuing threat as he slowly turns around. Someone from behind the cluster of Lee's team has come forward, and apparently she's not carrying a weapon, because nobody has freaked out and started shooting people.

"Excuse me," the woman says sharply, and his people look to him with uncertainty. He nods, not sure what else to do, and they let her pass.

She's limping, propped up on a crutch, a middle-aged woman with a hard look on her face, her hair pulled back in into a braid. Her dark suit has seen better days. Lee's not quite sure what's going on but the once-over she gives him is not much more pleasant than that barrel under his nose.

She exchanges a long, indecipherable look with formerly-in-charge guy, and Lee thinks he's about to argue, but then his weapon comes down and he takes a step back, scowling as much at her as at Lee. Nobody else moves.

"Thank you." To Lee she says, "Hello. I'm Laura Roslin."

Somewhere, sometime he's heard that name before, but there have been so many names, so many people, dead, alive, frightened, rebellious, and if he'd carried it all around he'd have gone under by now. "Lee Adama." It's embarrassing how out of breath he sounds.

"Yes," she says clearly. "I know who you are, and what you're doing here." Her tone is cold, not giving an inch, and Lee can only stand there and take it because much as he's had it with the accusations and the blame and the bullets, there's no use escalating the tension. "Now how about we all stand down for the time being so nobody gets killed by accident, and the captain and I take a walk?"

That last part is addressed to him. And she could cut the high-handed air, but anything's good if it puts an end to the standoff. "Fine by me."

The civilians collectively lower their weapons. Lee nods once at his people. "Do it." He catches Tobias' eye with a silent order, and he knows she's got it covered; stay here, keep your cool, don't let them frak with you.

He wonders about the gun hanging from his shoulder as he turns to follow Roslin, and she notes it with a raised eyebrow but voices no objection. Walking next to her, he can see fading scabs on the side of her chin, the skin underneath showing signs of an older bruise.

It's a storage room she takes him to. A man and a woman are standing in the corridor, greeting Roslin with tight nods but keeping their distance, and Lee feels the disadvantage even though he can see no weapons. Plenty of room for a gun under the man's jacket, in one of the woman's bulky trouser pockets. They both eye him with a mixture of interest and suspicion. Stupid, letting himself be separated from his team, and irresponsible as well because they need him, green as they are. If there's a trap now would be a good time to spring it.

Roslin is holding the heavy door open by leaning against it, watching him with narrowed eyes. "I'm sure you can shoot me faster than I can kill you with my crutch." Then she gives the door a push, obviously struggling with its weight and her injury. "Shall we?"

Lee's face is still burning when the door closes behind them, and that's bullshit because it's not unreasonable to be wary on a ship that greeted them with an ambush.

The room is packed with an assortment of boxes, some of them opened, filler material covering the floor in one corner. One of the three overhead lights is malfunctioning, giving a shaky little flicker now and then. A piece of dirty cardboard crunches under Lee's feet as he steps into the oval that's walkable.

Roslin limps over to a large crate, apparently at ease with turning her back to him, the bad fit of her jacket emphasised with each hampered step. She carefully lowers herself to sit, stretching out her weak leg.

There's nothing weak at all about the look she gives him. "So, this is how you do things. I'm glad we finally got to see it first hand."

His back stiffening, Lee almost answers, almost _apologises_ , but then he gets a grip. Not going there; no frakking guilt-trip from some random civilian who thinks she'd know so much better what to do with no command structure and no reinforcements and everybody just out for themselves. "You're in charge of this dump?"

She regards him for a second, then places the crutch next to her on the coarse wood. "Right now, this _dump_ hosts those boxes of medical supplies you're so keen to get your hands on, so I for one don't know where you get off being snotty."

"Lady, I've got dying people on the _Comet_. I didn't come here to argue manners."

"Pity." A hard stare; the uneven light makes the bruised side of her chin look worse. "Because a lot of people are dying and I don't see what makes yours so special." She pauses, watching him, and despite his anger Lee can't help feeling he's supposed to hear something, understand something, and he's at a loss.

He's almost glad she doesn't wait for an answer. "I believe this is what you were looking for," she says in a neutral tone, indicating a pile of metal cases past his left shoulder.

The label of the medical service. He goes to check them out; six cases with an unbroken seal, only the one on top has been opened. It's better than they'd hoped, and Lee imagines the relieved faces in their improvised sickbay, thinks they'll just need to hold on for a little while now, and he'll thank the gods when this one is over.

Turning back to her, the knowing look on her face is like a slap.

"We don't need all of it," he says without thinking, like an idiot.

"Imagine my relief."

Right, like he should care what she thinks of him, as long as they can take the supplies, preferably without anybody dying. At least he seems to be speaking to the right person. He draws in a slow breath, examining the badly organised storage room again. Their good luck the boxes in question are right there by the door, not hidden in the general mess. "We can't protect the fleet when we're out of everything," he ends up saying, out of some need to justify himself. "Force isn't-- the default." That matters. That still matters, and screw her superior scepticism. "It's not supposed to be like this. We contacted you. We wanted to negotiate."

"You know about the raids, of course." There's a hint of a smile there, but it's not kind. "The _other_ raids."

He nods; of course he knows. Raids and riots and ships running out of food, and ships falling apart, and all the many ways they've been bungling it since they made it out of the wreckage at Ragnar.

"We were boarded just last week, did you know that?" she asks conversationally. "We called your ship, too."

"We get a lot of calls." Damn adrenaline, spiking high and then ebbing away, leaving him exhausted when he can't afford to be, when he can't afford to sound this beaten, not yet, not here. "We can't be everywhere."

"Looks to me like you're nowhere."

Lee meets her eyes, and he says nothing. He wants to sit down, doesn't because she hasn't asked him to, and now he almost laughs at _that_ absurdity.

"You can't feed your own crew," she goes on, underscoring how pathetic they are with each deliberate word. "You go and take some of this and some of that, and sometimes you interfere when people start shooting each other, but mostly you only hear about it afterwards, and generally speaking, every ship is on its own. Does that sum it up?"

Strangely enough that's the first thing she says that doesn't sound like an accusation. Every ship on its own. No, they're nowhere, with no plan to what they're doing, and fatigue makes it hard to argue; anger worked better. "More or less."

She shifts around on the uncomfortable crate, propping herself up with one hand at her side, thoughtful as she's watching him. The silent attention is odd, but he has no words to break it, so he doesn't.

Sometimes he wonders whether his father would have made the same choices that Lee has. If he'd have found better choices, if he would have been better at... whatever the hell Lee is doing. He slides the strap of his weapon off his shoulder and stands it on the ground against a ceiling-high pile of brown boxes; they're heavy enough to support him too when he leans back. Under her cool dissection, the thought of claiming anything these people have on their ship that could help them trade, could help them survive seems ridiculous now.

"Your commanding officer," she says. "The colonel who took over. He died?"

It's not an unreasonable question, but right now he hadn't expected it. Nothing to do with the supplies that Lee is almost ready to leave here. He nods slowly, wearily, looking away for a second as he remembers that bloody fight on-- he's forgotten the name of the ship. "He was killed about three weeks ago."

She exhales slowly, but doesn't look surprised. "Who's in charge now?"

"There's... Captain Kelly and I are on the _Comet_. Some of _Galactica_ 's crew were picked up by other ships, we haven't managed to collect them all." He's not used to breaking it down like this. His people follow his orders; the rest depends on circumstance, alliances he can never keep up with, a day-to-day that's nothing short of a mess. "We're in contact with the captains of the surviving vessels; some of them have weight with the others." He hesitates. "That's as far as I can tell." Their first jump after the battle at Ragnar, they lost two ships in a post-jump crash, damaging three more. The second time, two ships went missing.

"What about the president?" Her questions are without enthusiasm, without a plea for hope. It's like she's ticking off a list.

Of course. What an inspired interlude that had been. "The _president_ is hiding on the _Stardust Traveller_ and staying as far away from the fleet as he possibly can." No, there hadn't been much help from that quarter. Pointless to get riled up about it. "Because there could be another accident."

"I see."

"Secretary of Intercolonial Transport, can you believe it." He doesn't even know why he's telling her all this. All he came for was some medicines, and all he got so far was a lecture.

Her shoulders rise with a silent sigh, but she doesn't dwell on it. "The _Comet_ is the main base for the Colonial Fleet then?"

That makes him look up. Not a dangerous question, nothing secret she's asking him to reveal, but-- she's not arguing with him anymore; gathering information, yes, but there's something else, some kind of tension underneath her cool façade.

"Yes. For what's left of it."

"And your soldiers, they're loyal to you."

"Why?" he asks sharply, too defensively. Like she'll go and instigate a mutiny.

She smiles, fleeting and almost like a dare. "Curiosity."

He answers with a firm nod. "Yes."

And she's still watching him, unperturbed by his defiant stare until he's uncomfortable and beyond, and he looks to see if those boxes are still there, if they're still sealed. He should get a move on, not stand here being inspected.

"You're Commander Adama's son." Matter-of-fact, not like something she just figured out. She knew this.

Out of the blue it can still cut off his air, remembering his father and the terms on which they parted. But he recovers. It matters less these days, being William Adama's son. He doesn't know why she would care, when Lee manages not to, most of the time. "Your father was a hero," she says then, with an undertone that says something else. "That'll work for you."

"Work for me?" Watching him-- _sizing him up_ , that's what she's doing. He stands up straight, his voice flat when he finds himself saying,"I didn't come here for this." Whatever _this_ is, it's unnerving, gives him a queasy feeling, and he doesn't need that and he doesn't want questions about his father. What he wants is out, now.

Her response is very calm, very considered. "In that case, I suggest you take your _thugs_ and get off this ship." The words should be biting but her tone is almost... gentle.

"They're not thugs." Bungling, again. He takes a step forward to signal that this is over, that he'll take what he came for, or a part of it or whatever, and go, but she just sits there, unimpressed, waiting until he drops his hands, helpless and sticky inside his too-thick gloves. "They're-- we're Colonial officers." And he'd wonder why he says it, why he bothers explaining himself to someone like her, except it's there, hovering at the edge of his exhausted, spinning mind. What she's saying. What she wants him to do.

"Are you."

He's supposed to be. She lets him ponder it, fitting her forearm back into the cuff of the crutch. A deep breath, and she pushes herself up, balancing for a moment. Possibly she's in pain. But her eyes are clear, and there's a last thoughtful look before she seems to come to a conclusion.

"You can take the medical supplies," she says. "Distribution will be up to you."

That should please him, should be the end of it. It's what he's here for. Except by now he knows it's not.

"Work for me how?"

Her body is slanted to one side, in need of support, thin fingers gripping the crutch tight, and she couldn't look steelier, standing there. "You need to take control of the refinery ship. That is your first move."

"We've negotiated with their captain over the fuel distribution--"

"I'm not talking," she cuts him off, "about a negotiation. Fuel is what everybody needs. You need to be in control of that. Then, food supplies. The _Hera_ has the largest stores, or so we've heard. But you can find that out."

She's known he'd come here all along. And she means-- not his crew. Not the military. Him.

"I don't have that kind of authority." Even if he managed-- even if it didn't mean more fighting, more conflict-- she couldn't mean that. She couldn't _want_ that. "I don't have the right to--"

"You have the guns."

He looks her over, trying to see if she's mocking him like before, but she's not. Fuel; food. Control. A name. She's dead serious.

"And that..." He taps the metal boxes with his boot, clears his throat. "That's the butter?"

"It's a start." Her voice allows for no dissent.

"I'm not--"

"There's nobody else." She raises one shoulder, like it's the most obvious thing in the world. "Everything else is chaos."

"And you?" The thought alone is appalling. No, he won't play into an agenda, be cajoled into some dirty alliance. "What do you get out of it?"

"The survival of this fleet." For the first time she shows a crack in her iciness, a hint of urgency in the angle of her body. "You have to keep them alive, and you have to keep them together." She means it. She wants him to take over, take over _everything_ , and she doesn't even know him. She's lost it. "All of this -- the raids, the extortions -- it all has to stop. We can't survive if we're fighting each other."

"So you want me to fight them all instead." More injuries and more deaths, and more hatred, and no one should have that kind of power, not him, nobody.

"I want you to do whatever is necessary so the fighting _ends_." She breathes deeply, and then waits. No need to spell it out. The picture is clear enough, ugly and blunt.

Not as crazy as it ought to be. Dependence for cohesion. Order by force. "There's nobody else," she says again, cool and uncompromising, softening nothing. They will all be afraid of him. Whatever is necessary, coming down on him heavy and unwanted. She watches it happen with a slow exhalation, an easing of her shoulders, a small nod. "I'll help you."


End file.
